“How many fingers do you see?”, asks Awesome Uncle Brian Shiells. “Two on one hand. And two on the other. That’s four. And that’s how many footies I’m donating to the Swannies.”

Uncle Brian is not a Great Uncle of Saigon President, Nick Shiells.

In a further sign of unadulterated awesomeness, Uncle Brian is an Awesome Uncle of Nick’s.

Well may you ask, “Why?”

Well, when the Swannies were desperately looking for a new footy for last month’s Indochina Cup in Hanoi, Uncle Brian flew into Hanoi from Australia with four. Actually, it was five footies.

Brian excitedly produced the fifth footy and said, “Have a look! They’re bleeding good. And they weren’t that expensive.”

We looked at each other. We looked at the footy again. And, while it was red, it didn’t seem big enough. We looked at each other again. We smelt it. That doesn’t smell like leather…

“And they were only 20 bucks each”, continued Brian who seemed particularly proud of his purchase.

“Brian, what have you bought? WTF?? We’re about to play the Indochina Cup.”

Anyway, before we killed Uncle Brian, he laughed his head off and then pulled out four brand new, spanking, leather Sherrin footies!

“Hey? What’dya think about that? Ya had no idea what was goin’ on, did ya??”

Brian Houdini had narrowly escaped from the lynch mob with a zero to hero performance. And then, just when things couldn’t get any better, Brian declared that he wanted to be the Swannies’ Official Balls Sponsor and would donate all of them to the Club. Brian also insisted on purchasing a Club shirt.

Uncle Brian, as mentioned previously, you are an Awesome Uncle.

On behalf of all the Vietnam Swans, thank you very much indeed for your incredible generosity. Every match day, every time Tommy Sherrin passes through the big sticks at the Swannies’ end of the ground, we’ll be thinking of you.